Emotional Investment Jim Reston ’ 63, left, whose work has often touched on issues of race, was on a panel with Lester Carson ’ 63 at their 50th class reunion in May.

RAY BLACK III

James Reston Jr. ’ 63 characterizes hiswriting career as “a series of obsessions”than 25 boxes of correspondence and notesfrom his writing career) to the SouthernHistorical Collection housed there.

“Youthfulexperiences getrecycled through-out your career asa writer,” he toldan audience ofThat deep emotional engagement withhis material has characterized Reston’s lifein writing. He was a lecturer in creativewriting at UNC from 1971 to 1981, ascholar in residence at the Library of Con-gress and a journalist whose articles haveappeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fairand Time magazines. Among his 13 booksare The Conviction of Richard Nixon: TheUntold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews;

more than 100 in the Pleasants Family
Room at UNC’s Wilson Library, just a
few days before he and fellow class members met in May for the reunion marking
the 50th anniversary of their graduation.

Defenders of the Faith, a study of the war
between Islam and Europe in the 16th
century; and The Innocence of Joan Little: A

Reston also discussed two soon-to-be-published books: The Real Target in Dallas,
in which he posits that assassin Lee Harvey
Oswald’s intended victim was not President
John F. Kennedy but Texas Gov. John
Connally, stemming from a dispute over
Oswald’s discharge from the Marines while
Connally was secretary of the Navy, due
out in September; and The Nineteenth
Hijacker, a novel focusing on one of the
9/11 terrorists, due out in January.

“I came to Carolina in 1959 at a time
when Chapel Hill was a hotbed of intellectual activity and social revolution —
segregated restaurants, segregated bathrooms and bus stations. The question as a
student was whether to watch passively or
participate. I participated in that great

Southern Mystery, which chronicled the
case of a black woman who in 1975 was
acquitted of killing a white jailer who
tried to rape her while she was being held
in a Beaufort County jail appealing other
charges.

During a question-and-answer period,
Reston was asked whether he wrote to tell
a story or to persuade.

“I gave up persuasion a long time ago,”he said with a laugh. “Essentially I’m a sto-ryteller, the story is what motivates me. Iwanted a life as a writer, and I wanted tofollow my own fascinations. I never wrotea book I wasn’t emotionally involved in.”American revolution.”During the reunion weekend, Restonmoderated a panel titled “Race, Desegrega-tion and Chapel Hill, 1959-1963” in thesame room at the library. And he hadrecently donated his personal archives (more